Disintegrate mechanics

First of all, please keep any issues you have with this skill being out of place in Diablo out of this forum. The topic of this thread is to answer some questions and wonderings I had about this skill. If anyone has factual knowledge on the subject or just opinions/ideas, please share. However, please say if it such a fact (as of when you demo'd the game) or just your own two cents.

1. I believe I heard/read that disintegrates damage increases on the target the longer it is held, as the target "heats up." Does this mean I have to only aim at that one target, or would a target "heat up" if I am sweeping across multiple enemies?

2. How will disintegrate work in conjunction with the skill Mana Burst (Increases the damage of any spell cast from full mana by 25%, according to diablowiki). Would only the first "tick" of damage be boosted by 25% or all damage while the spell is channeled from full mana? Could be very devastating if it is the latter, hmm?

Thanks everyone! I'm sure I had more thoughts about it but they are eluding me as of this moment. Feel free to post your own wonderings as well. I'm sure someone else as some thoughts as they think of D3 as they attempt to drift to sleep after reading the forums or watching the gameplay video for umpteenth time. |||1. We only have reports of blizzcon gameplay, but monsters died too quickly to check if realy heats up anything

2. In my opinion it would just increase, first tick, but right now only Blizz knows.

But it would be nice if it increase whole atack, since you propably don't spent all time standing, but dodging from time to time too.|||1. Good question, guess it would depend if they mean the spell heat itself or the heat in the mob. Though I believe those at Blizzcon couldn't even tell wether it increased over time or not.

2. Wondered about this one myself. I would think the first tick. Which would mean its best for spells that only have one shot. But there isn't any official answers to either of these.

Edit: Took too long and someone beat me lol.|||Maybe we could grab a fallen, tie him to a log and proceed to slow cook him with Disintegrate .. and periodically stick a fork in him to see what the progress is. That would be a good indicator of "heat over time' .. LOL

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. You ask good questions, but the Blizzard information vacuum has us all shrugging... but i call shotgunn on a thigh |||Blizzard said "heats up the enemy". So you'd have to focus fire on one enemy. I'd think the damage bonus would decay, but not disappear, if the beam went off the target.

No way. First tick, definitely.|||Now regarding the whole first tick thing, how often does disintegrate tick? I can't recall off hand and I don't have the means to check any videos right now, but it seems to me the disintegrate damage is dealt pretty smoothly. As in the life is almost constantly going down. So maybe the increased damage from Mana Burst would last for a certain amount of time for disintegrate.|||Is it possible it would last until the attack had been uninterrupted? Like it counts as one attack and the mana was full when you started, until the attack is broken off. That seems like it would be too overpowered, however standing in one place for a long enough time would also be a fairly dangerous trade off, me thinks. Once you move u break off the attack and it doesn't count for the 25% increase anymore. The dev teams have said they wanted you to play with strategy, I could see "well if I stay here I get increased attack, but am obviously more vulnerable when stationary" as a strategic decision. Just thinking out loud lol.|||We have two beam spells so far:

Ray of Frost

Description: Project a beam of cold energy. Critical hits from cold damage freeze targets.

Max Rank: 1

Rank 1: Deals 6 cold damage/second.

Mana cost: 16 mana per sec.

Disintegrate

Description: Emanate a beam of pure energy dealing 10 arcane damage per second. Damage is modified to 80% each time the beam passes through the target. Critical hits from Arcane damage silence targets for 4 secs.

Rank: 1

Mana cost: 12 per sec.

You hold them down as long as you want and the mana cost/damage is per second. So the increased damage may just be for the first second. Now why does Disintegrate cost less mana and do more damage than Ray of Frost? It even does damage to those behind, which Ray of Frost doesn't seem to do.|||Perhaps in the current build balance wise it makes sense for Ray of Frost to do less damage per cost of mana, since it is also has the chance to freeze targets via critical hits? I'm not as familiar with the way cold damage in general works in D3, does it only provide a slow when a critical hit is reached then, unlike nearly all cold damage providing a slow effect in D2?|||Whenever you get a critical hit, it affects the target depending on the damage type. Cold Freezes enemies.

Yeah, ray of frost does less damage because of the chance to freeze.